Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Maruders Fleet Manual Pt 1: The Oroshan

Hi all! SeerK here once again. So I
have been going through the new Marauders Fleet Manual since Spartan
was good enough to put it back up with some fixes in it. Most of the
updates were just omissions and such and there were not any real
major changes. With the impending drop of Planetfall this month I
wanted to kinda go through the Marauders before the obligatory series
of Planetfall posts takes up the blog for a bit.

So Lets start with my personal favorite
in the book. The Oroshan. I have always liked these models. The
Armageddon Dreadnought is big. The Defiler Cruisers are also have a
good heft to them. The only ship I am not a fan of design wise is
the Slayer class frigate. The snail like design is a little weird to
me. I am hoping when they eventually release the new models we have
a big more consistency in design. I digress a bit though.

The Oroshan are strait up mercenaries,
which means it does not matter if you have a Kurak Alliance or Zenian
League fleet. Even though the Blood Tribes of the Oroshan hail from
Directorate controlled space they work for anybody who has currency.
This means any fleet can have up to 25% of its points total made up
of mercenary ships. For the Dindrenzi and the RSN this works out
rather well as the Oroshan add some major fire power and have a fleet
tactics rating of 3. SO Dindrenzi and RSN fleets do not suffer from
a lower tactics rating by including allies. Lets take a look at the
ships.

The Armageddon class Dreadnought lives
up to its name and class in every sense. This ship is big, extremely
well armed and very tough. The Armageddon sports impressive and long
range fore power in pretty much all of its arcs. Range band 2 is
lethal distance for all of the weapons. For max fire in the fore arc
you need to be at 20 inches. In the side arcs you need to be about 16
inches. You have many options for your 3 hard points. I personally
like to take weapon shielding, +2 move and second assault. I then
add the Special Forces MAR and give the Torpedos Decimator Warheads.
Being able to force disorder checks on individual ships and squadrons
is nice. You can also add wings and more AP, which is nice if you
give the ship Grief Escorts. The escorts are armed decently and you
have the choice of adding point defense or assault points. I usually
give it the point defense upgrade as I tend to use the escorts to
bolster the Armageddons point defense and take out small ships. I
love the Armageddon. The couple games I have fielded it, the ship
has really decimated my opponents tier one vessels. Its ability to
engage several targets effectively is impressive.

Sadly you cannot take the Armageddon in
a patrol fleet. So we have a new addition to the Oroshan fleet in
2.0. The Harbinger Battle Carrier is your Patrol fleet, any fleet
really, tier one choice. The Harbinger is not really lacking for
fire power. It has slightly less dice in each arc when compared to
the Armageddon. It does lack the torpedo weapons though. It has a
max wing capacity of 9 wings with a hard point upgrade. I would use
one of the hard points for this upgrade. The other I would use for
weapon shielding. I personally think you get more for your points
giving it the weapon shielding upgrade rather then a second shield
die. You can take Grief Escorts. I would probably take at least two
geared for point defense. This ship, on paper, looks like it can
tangle with most battleships and other battle carriers. It would
need support though. I have yet to use the Harbinger in a game. So
I will reserve any major judgments or comments until I have a few
games under my belt with it.

The Oroshan's only tier 2 choice is the
Defiler Cruiser. I really like this ship. You can take them in a
squadron of 4 and give them the Pack Hunter MAR. Its Beam weapon is
only in the fore arc, but it does go out to range band 4. With the
Pack Hunter MAR this gives you 7 dice and 40 inches. Not to bad.
The Torpedos can be fired in any arc. They can also be given
Decimator warheads. The Defiler is on par with a heavy cruiser in
terms of fire power. It cannot take fire like a heavy cruiser
though. It does have a DR of 4 and a CR of 7 with one shield die so
they can take some fire. I like to send my Defilers after big ships
as they have 22 beam dice in range band two when they are at full
strength. This can really lay the hurt on even dreadnoughts. The
only real issue is they become targets after one good volley of fire.
All in all the defiler is a real solid cruiser class vessel.

The Tier three choice is the Slayer
class frigate. These ships can be fielded in squadrons of 6 and have
the Pack Hunter MAR. They are decently armed, but only have a fixed
fore weapon. This can mean it can be a little difficult to get all
the Slayers lined up on some targets in a full squadron. The other
issue you can run into is the fact they only have 1 crew point. This
makes the ships unsuitable for hanging out in debris fields,
surviving boarding assaults from pretty much anybody and also makes
them easy pickings for assault robot torpedoes. The Grief Escort
also has one crew point so be wary.

All in all the Oroshan are a good hard
hitting fleet. They are a good anchor for a Marauder or mercenary
fleet. They also are great additions to regular fleets. I am going
to be using them a whole lot more since I acquired a fleet. I may
start running them in tournaments once I also get another frigate
squadron. The minimums for a battle fleet fit into 900 points as
fate would have it. A dreadnought, 4 cruisers and 12 frigates. Not
to bad.

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